Line a baking pan with foil. Drizzle Extra Virgin Olive Oil on bottom. With a tablespoon or cookie scoop, evenly scoop about 24 balls and place them in the pan. In a small bowl add about ¼ cup oil. Using fingers from one hand, rub som oil on the other palm then repeat with the other hand. Roll three balls, reapply oil and repeat until done.

Broil until brown on one side, flip being careful not to break them and brown on the other side. Remove into a bowl and repeat the cooking steps with the remaining meatball mixture.

Meanwhile, in large sauce pot, sauté onions until translucent then add garlic. Add red wine and turn heat to high and stir until wine is reduced by more than half.

Add tomatoes, seasoning and salt and pepper. Reduce heat to low, stirring every few minutes. After second batch of meatballs are cooked, remove them to the bowl then gently add meatballs into sauce. Stir carefully and heat through for 10 minutes.

My son’s Facebook status: “there is nothing in the world like waking up to the smell of sauce already cooking. I love being Italian“.

It’s many hours and many hand washings later and I can still smell what I cooked all over my hands. And, that’s not a bad thing!

I am using the last of the San Marzano tomatoes I canned last fall. I guess I will need to do more this year!

The herb garden is one of the stars of the show. I love seeing the green of the parsley in my meatballs.

I’m very loyal. I think Contadina makes a great, consistent product. When I don’t have my own tomatoes I always use Contadina.

I remember as a girl watching my mother make meatballs. She would shiver with how cold the meat was. Sometimes she would ask me to roll up her sleeves (I learned about food safely as a young foodie!).

This bowl of olive oil and 1/4 cup measure are my secret weapons while making meatballs. With the eggs, cheese, breadcrumbs and spices I get ten 1/4 cup meatballs per pound of ground meat. It is exceedingly predictable so planning is easy and they cook evenly when they are the same size.

Here are those little soldiers, all lined up in a row. The secret here is the pork fat and juice on the bottom of the foil lined pan. Before I even chop an onion or pepper I fire up my broiler, line my heavy 13″ x 9″ baking pan and cook my pork. I used pork shoulder and ribs today. They were big so I cut each into three pieces.

Yup, that’s nutmeg. It adds a subtle flavor that no one can recognize.

There are six more just like it in the freezer. These two are going to friends.